Page 23 of Blood & Lace
"But I do. I'm the only person in this world who sees you, who knows you."
Onyx's eyes widened and he was up in seconds. His chair clattered backward. I was up and over the table in a span of seconds and dragging him into my arms.
"Careful, Onyx, your fear is just as enticing." I kissed his forehead and breathed him in while I could. "You know, you really should fire this company. They tried to convince me that you wanted a divorce by serving me papers. The first few I laughed off, but it's now to the point I'm contemplating murdering them all." I let out a soft breath as the tension in my body bled out. "I really did miss you. If we were ever to get a divorce, I might end up losing what little sanity I do have."
7
ONYX
God,he was batshit insane. The more I stared at Lucero, the more I wanted to bolt. He was the type of person you couldn't reason with, and someone without reason was unforgivably dangerous. He continued to smile at me with my blade still piercing through his flesh as he gazed at me like a teenager in love.
Ugh.
I cleared my throat. It was time to put a stop to this shit once and for all. I stood and moved over to the counter. When I returned, he was already pressed up against me, as if he couldn't breathe if he wasn't in my skin.
"Jesus, back off!" I growled as I shoved a hand into his chest and pushed him away. "You're too close."
"Not close enough," he argued as he tried to gather close to me again. "What are you doing?"
I had to shove him away again. My palm itched, my fingers twitching as I thought about what I had to do. He wasn't going to make it easy, but I couldn't stand another minute of this. Ineeded my freedom, and Lucero Marino was a ball and chain if I had ever seen one.
Shivering, I laid the papers down on the dining room table and crossed my arms over my chest. Finally, I laid a pen on the stack of papers. I glanced at Lucero.
"Sign them," I said shortly. "You're drawing this out longer than you need to and it's pissing me off."
Lucero smiled at me as he pulled the papers over. When he read them, the smile was immediately erased from his face. His brow furrowed before he glanced up at me with something dark glowing in his eyes. It made my heart skip a beat and my stomach knotted.
"More of this joke?" he asked. "I told you, I'm over this prank. Don't do it anymore."
I scoffed. "It's not a prank you, putain d'idiot! I do not know you. You do not know me!Will you stop this nonsense before I lose my fucking mind!? Shit!"
My tongue automatically switched to a line of rapid-fire French that I couldn't stop even if I tried. Lucero Marino was easily the most frustrating man I had ever met in my twenty-seven years of life. No one had ever made me lose my composure the way he did with his senseless bullshit.
As I waved my hand, Lucero locked in on it. I stopped mid-sentence, and realized what he was staring at. For some reason, I shoved my hand under the table.
Lucero moved closer, reached underneath the table, and snatched my hand up. I tried to pull it back, but he was strong as hell. Lucero took his bloody, knife-stabbed hand, and slid my ring back onto my finger. The one I had left on the windowsill of his cabin. I stared between it, his wound, and him.
"Fuck, you really are psychotic."
"I'm in love," he breathed. "What's wrong with that?"
My chest ached. I had never been like Lucero. There was never a time where I had been so in love that I just knew it was meant to be. I hadn't even been casually in love. The word and the concept were both foreign to me. Part of me was envious. How nice it would have been to be so oblivious to the world and all its ugly that you could simply fall in love and think of nothing else.
I did not have that luxury.
Reaching over, I snatched the knife out of his hand. Lucero grunted. As blood bubbled up, I reached over and grabbed a kitchen towel before I wrapped it around his massive paw.
"You need stitches," I muttered. "Whatever we're going to do, nothing can happen until you do that first."
Lucero pulled his phone out. He pressed one button and smiled at me as I held his hand, applying pressure to it. I knew he was probably happy about the situation, after all, I was holding him.
"I need your help," Lucero said. "Stab wound." He grunted. "Doesn't matter. I'm at Onyx's place. Can you come soon?" He examined the towel. "Yeah, it's bleeding pretty bad." He shrugged.
"Don't say that so casually!" I snapped.
He grinned. "My brother just said the same thing. Jinx!"
I was going to kill him. No, I was going to pull the towel away and let him bleed to death. Of course, then I would have a giant body to dispose of and that would be a pain in the ass. On top of that, his family would find me and slice me up into tiny little pieces. And that was probably after the torture.
